Winstanley's Utopia

Guerrilla gardeners who have studied their history will have come across Gerrard Winstanley, the first recorded guerrilla gardener who's group went by the name of The Diggers. He was a prolific writer, and I have recently come across a detailed account of his writing and action by L H Berens in 1906. The whole book is available free online courtesy of Project Gutenberg. Read it here and consider Beren's observation about the significance of what he writes:

Winstanley was, in truth, one of the most courageous, far-seeing and philosophic preachers of social righteousness that England has given to the world. And yet how unequally Fame bestows her rewards. More’s Utopia has secured its author a world-wide renown; it is spoken of, even if not read, in every civilised country in the world. Gerrard Winstanley’s 163 Utopia is unknown even to his own countrymen. Yet let any impartial student compare the ideal society conceived by Sir Thomas More—a society based upon slavery, and extended by wars carried on by hireling, mercenary soldiers—with the simple, peaceful, rational and practical social ideal pictured by Gerrard Winstanley, and it is to the latter that he will be forced to assign the laurel crown.

You might even consider heading over to http://librivox.org/ and volunteering to record part or all of it so we can listen to it as an audio book! Or we could start it as a collaborative project there and have everyone pitch in a chapter or two... =)